And suddenly, all the love songs were about you.

Infatuation. It's the word of the day. It literally means "A foolish, unreasoning, or extravagant passion or attraction." That's all this is, folks. Sure, there's a first time for everything. 

Is infatuation the first step to love? Psssh, if I had the answer to that, I could solve a lot of problems.

According to M. Scott Peck, "Real love is a conscious choice that often employs the rational part of our brains. Some couples have a "free ride" in the early stages of their relationship where they experience the intense feelings characterized by romantic love, but not everyone. And these feelings certainly aren't necessary for real love to emerge as the relationship grows, as evidenced by the success rate of arranged marriages in other parts of the world. It's when the infatuation feelings diminish that the couple has to learn that love is a choice, not a feeling."

If you've spent your life growing up by Westernized standards, you've been bombarded with images and beliefs about love from the time you were born. Probably all of these ideas predicated on the archaic paradigm of romantic love. 

Romantic Love isn't real love. Romantic Love is, most simply put, infatuation. It's based on the model of longing for someone that you can never completely have, and it's this longing that then becomes mistaken for real love. Being in a state of longing is a dramatic and fully alive experience. It creates butterflies in your stomach and light-headedness in your mind. If not understood properly, the one in the longing position can easily believe that she or he is "in love."

If the object of the longing does reciprocate, the lover often runs the other way. (Isn't it always hilarious how running comes into play? Now I've justified it!)  And so begins an all-too-familiar game of chase with each participant alternating between the chaser or runner roles. The game is emotionally intense but ultimately unsatisfying. The bottom line is that real intimacy never occurs. It's dramatic, but safe. It's temporarily painful, but there's no long-term risk involved. But really, who wants to take risks? 

Real love requires that both people show up for each other in the same place, at the same time. Take a step back and  yourself if your lover one is on the same page as you, or if it's one person feeling and coercing affections from the other. There shouldn't be any game-playing (we aren't in elementary school anymore!) real love requires that both people risk their hearts to form a bond of true intimacy. 

What is all comes down to is two people who like each other willing to give it a shot. Two people who see something more than baseline attraction, two people who can admit the other person has faults, but that they are willing to take a chance, because something amazing could happen if you were willing to take a leap.